ScreenScribe

Prodigal Son | TVNZ OnDemand, from Tuesday ☆☆☆☆ “Fox’s newest crime procedural that has a delicious twist: Our titular hero Malcolm Bright (Tom Payne) is a brainy, frenetic serial killer profiler who also happens to be the son of one of New York’s most infamous murderers, Martin Whitly (Michael Sheen), aka The Surgeon … Together, they are […]

The Good Doctor | Lightbox, from Monday ➢ “The Good Doctor has something crucial to say, and it has a killer cast, and it does an amazing amount of setup in Monday’s efficient pilot hour. Young doctor-to-be Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore, Bates Motel) is on his way to a new life in a city sure […]

Bates Motel (SoHo, 8.30 Wednesdays) “The new season picks up some time after the fourth-season episodes, which climaxed with Norman killing Norma … Norman is nuts, and, as in Hitchcock’s movie, imagines that she’s still alive. And so we are treated to [Vera] Farmiga’s wonderful performance as a pushy, sarcastic, sexy, needy, and ferally strong woman imposing […]

The final season of Grimm will premiere here three days after it ends in the US. Season six will screen 8.30 Mondays from April 3 on The Zone. Why the channel has taken so long to schedule it is unclear, given its heroic catch-up last year with previous seasons. Like SoHo’s belated bow of Bates Motel’s final season, the […]

The fifth and final season of Bates Motel will premiere on SoHo on April 26 — which will be roughly 24 hours after it ends in the US. It’s puzzling and disappointing that SoHo has delayed the last season for so long, which picks up two years after Norma’s death. Typically, it airs a show’s final season […]

Penny Dreadful returns for its third season tonight (SoHo, 8.30) on a creepy double-bill with Bates Motel, which reverts to weekly hour-long instalments from 9.30. “Everything you’ve missed about Penny Dreadful — Eva Green, taxidermy, characters who say things like, ‘This whole country is built on skeletons. One would like a cup of tea, though’ — is […]

Winter is coming — and SoHo’s April highlights will make the transition a treat. As well as the season-six premiere of Game of Thrones, the premium drama channel will screen new episodes of Banshee, Fear the Walking Dead, Bates Motel, Orphan Black, Silicon Valley, Veep and The Tunnel: Sabotage. Game of Thrones again will be simulcast […]

Fans of Bates Motel and Utopia can look forward to their second seasons screening back-to-back with their first. Season two of Utopia will start on August 18 and of Bates Motel on August 21. Utopia S2 went to air this month in  the UK, where The Telegraph says it “bravely began” with a standalone prequel episode set in the […]

Bates Motel will join a horror onslaught next month on SoHo that includes the final season of True Blood, the premiere of Penny Dreadful and the ongoing American Horror Story: Coven. The Psycho spin-off was destined for Four through MediaWorks’ deal with NBC Universal before the in-receivership broadcaster restructured its studio output deal. So while […]

American Horror Story may lead this year’s Emmy nominations, with 17, but that hasn’t stop MediaWorks relegating the second season and the HD Psycho spin-off, Bates Motel, to Four. It’s galling to see HD production of this calibre languish in SD on Four when inferior fare like Chicago Fire gets plum peak-hour slots. American Horror […]